That's your opinion and you're entitled to it, but I think billions of dollars in residential, retail, entertainment, and tourism is worth discussion on a development forum. Many of the newer developements are residence condos. There are a lot of people retiring and relocating to the Gulf Coast. Some people are buying vacation condos or investment condos but that area is growing fast population wise as well. Baldwin county is only behind Shelby county in terms of growth over the last 15 years. Growth on the coast means more jobs. More jobs means population growth. There are around 10K jobs available now and speculation of close the 30K within 5 years. About a Cat 3-5 hurricane..... I think Ivan fell into that category and you'd be hard pressed finding evidence that it made landfall in Gulf Shores now. Ivan destroyed a lot of cheaply built developments but the big condos were fine. Also, the vast majority of the new development isn't on the gulf side, it's on the back bays and the intercoastal waterway.